I have been recording a series of solo noise jams using the Roland Super Jupiter MKS-80 while in the process of researching repairs. The unit currently cannot be tuned and does not respond to keyboard velocity information. This does not prevent me from exploring what the instrument can do sonically, without depending on traditional scales, or harmony. This sort of experimentation is usually done with modular synthesizers, or instruments that have most of the parameters available as tactile controls. In other words, to do this on an MKS-80 you need the MPG-80 programmer, or a viable alternative.

As far as physical controllers go, the CME Bitstream 3X seems to be one that a lot of MKS-80 users are talking about. It looks like a pretty good controller for a lot of things, but once again, it’s a little on the expensive side of things. I opted to use the reKon editor as a plugin and map MIDI controls to it as I described in reKon Audio VST-AU MKS-80 Editor. This worked great, with no noticeable latency. Here’s a segment from the first experiment in this series.

Noise Jam Segment